I stepped into the living room with a twirl before looking at where Thallor and Mortimer sat on the sofa. It was a sight I had come to know intimately, but it didn’t stop the stutter I felt every time I saw it. “Well,” I smiled, “how do I look?”
Mort meowed once, which I took as his approval, beforelooking up at Thallor, whose head remained buried six feet under in his serial killer-inspired romance.
“For someone so devoid of human emotion, you sure do seem to like romance novels.” I giggled as I walked into the kitchen and stuffed my jacket with a few loose gummy worms before pulling on myBlundie’s.When Thallor finally managed to pull his attention from what I had come to learn was four hundred glorious pages of killing for foreplay, fucking, and a little bit of cannibalism thrown in for good measure, he simply blinked at me.
My mind was still reeling after the one afternoon he had pinned me to my sofa, sending my heart rate toGuinness World Recordlevel heights. But I was never really sure what Thallor thought about me. His face was always blank. Stony. Never truly giving anything away. I wanted to say I saw something behind his eyes, but I wasn’t sure if it was all in my head. He had just been reading a spicy book after all. Whatever overexcitement or blushing I saw hiding at the corners of his expression was probably just in my own head.
“You know what, don’t even answer the question. I don’t want to hear what you have to say.” I sighed as I pulled open the kitchen door and looked longingly at the empty shelves as if I was looking for my long-lost lover across a crowded room. I didn’t really believe in love at first sight–or love in any real capacity, for that matter–and I definitely didn’t believe in it when all that greeted me was a punnet of mouldy raspberries.
“You look the same way you always do,” he replied curtly before going back to his book.Ladies and gentlemen, Thallor Malphas.“Like…like you are going to work.”
I sighed into the fridge, hoping that it might swallow me up. Between the way the white and grey fluff covered raspberries were looking at me and Thallor’s endless string of mental commentary, I was really winning at life. I slammed the door ofthe fridge slightly too aggressively before settling my demon of a roommate with a deadpan stare. “Didn’t I just say I didn’t want your opinion?”
“You often say one thing and mean another,” he said. His tone was simple. Almost dismissive. But the way he looked at me, darkened eyes and a slight rise and fall of his chest, suggested thathe,too, was saying something else entirely. “You wouldn’t have asked if you didn’t want my opinion.”
“Whilst that may be true, I should have known better,” I said, rolling my eyes, “given that your head is currently buried in pussy or?—”
And just like that, the colour of Thallor’s cheeks turned crimson. The burn was slow, taunting, but it scorched his cheeks with a blush so bright, I wasn’t sure where his cheeks ended and his hair began. For a prince of Hell, he was deliciously easy to fluster.
“—or was it the cock and balls you were more interested in?”
And for the first time,I witnessed a demon stammer. The words came out jumbled and out of place before he stopped, taking a deep breath and scowling at me. “Stop looking up the plots of the books I’m reading.”
“Am I not allowed to take an interest in your interests?” I smiled at him in mock innocence.
“Come a little closer, Sterling, and I’ll show you exactly what I am interested in.” Thallor’s voice dropped to a low growl as he looked up at me. Eyes blacker than they had been moments ago. “Let me show you what being a demon is really like. Because there are other ways to have someone screaming than the tortures they suffer in Hell.”
The switch in his demeanour was sudden and aggressive. I didn’t know what was up and what was down, what was left and what was–God, please stop looking at me like that.If I was a match,he was a flame, igniting me from deep within my core. My toes curled in my boots, and the sound that escaped me existed somewhere on the spectrum between nervous laugh and wanton whimper. I willed my brain to stop thinking about his comment and what it might have meant. I shook my head, and with it all the lustful, inappropriate thoughts before meeting his eyes again.
Wrong choice.How many times would I find myself lost in the reds of his eyes? I felt like I was drowning in a sea of my own want. I turned away from him, patting myself down, ensuring I had my purse, phone, and headphones to give me something,anythingto do before stopping by the door.
Think of something, Quincey. Anything. Just change the fucking subject.
“I know what I want to wish for.”
His eyes widened. “Really?”
I nodded tentatively, not really knowing how to broach the subject of my grandmother’s illness. For all the effort and time the doctors had put into making my grandmother comfortable, they had all but given up on her getting better. Her last few hospital appointments had made that painfully clear. Her illness was progressing at an alarming rate, and whilst I wanted to ensure I had the wording of my wishes right, I could no longer just sit around and wait for the answer to miraculously appear in front of me.
It was difficult to interpret the change in Thallor’s and my relationship over the month and a half we had been living together. Whilst he existed in a perpetual state of dissatisfaction and was still endlessly maddening to live with, things had begun to feel infinitely more tolerable.Nice, even.With Esme and Isaac busy with their own courses and saving what little free time they had for each other, I found myself with much more time on my hands. Time that I spent introducing Thallor to my favourite films.
Maybe it was the transactional nature of our relationship. Maybe it was that we didn’t expect anything from one another, but we settled into a comfortability I hadn’t expected. But there were still things I struggled to open up about. There were still things about my life that I held close to my chest. I clutched onto them with hands that ached and fingers that bled because that was all I could really do. I didn’t want to tell him about Maura. I didn’t want to speak my pain into existence. I didn’t want to let him see that part of myself when, in the back of my mind, I knew he only saw me as achore.Someone he spent time with because hehadto, not because he wanted to.
“We can talk about it later,” I offered up a weary, tired smile before jingling my keys as my cue to leave. “Do you remember how to use the phone?”
He rolled his eyes. He had explained that whilst demons did not actively frequent the mortal plane unless summoned, they still watched this plane and had a relatively good understanding of modern technology and typical human advancement. I’d offered him one of my previous phones, and he had opted for the one I’d had when I was in the sixth grade. An indestructible flip phone–one with only the text and snake functionality–that looked laughably small in his large hands.
Spawn of Satan: Yes.
He looked up at me and smirked.Brilliant.TheSpawn of Satanwas starting to develop a sense of humour.
“I’ll call you when I’m walking home, okay?” I said, and I walked out the door. “Oh, don’t do any demon magic shit whilst I’m gone.”
The smirk already etched across his face stretched wider as he shook his head. “Demon shitindeed.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Why was it that when your brain was already a clump of misfiring synapses and disconnected thoughts, life decided to throw you curveball after curveball? Ones that came in the form of oddly specific cocktail requests and one too many people thinking it was okay to click at me for my attention.
